Tag Archives: egregiously earnest and lacking in subtlety

I talk about monsters to anyone who’ll listen. I can figure out a way to introduce the topic into a truly impressive variety of conversations, and half the time it’ll even sound natural. I am nothing if not single-minded. As a result, I’ve had many people ask me what my favorite monster is, and of course it will come as no surprise that my answer is WEREWOLVES. I often follow this up with, “They’re just so versatile!” Depending on the audience, this is met with either a murmur of agreement or a really strange look.

Werewolves’ versatility is derived from their simplicity. They’re human ’til they’re not. They’re human ’til they’re beast. That’s all there is to it. As such, they embody some of the fundamentals of monstrosity, but what precisely it all means will depend entirely on the context of their story. You can explore just about any fear or hatred or taboo desire with werewolves. Consequently, there are countless werewolf stories out in the world. Some are terrible, some are great, but all are different. I can’t imagine ever growing bored with this monster.

One thing I have identified as an aspect of some werewolf stories that really speaks to me is the narrative of learning to embrace a formerly-rejected part of the self. I can get mad theoretical right here (and I’m currently revising a paper on monsters, so the temptation is strong), but suffice to say that when two (or more!) seemingly disparate points of view coexist within a single subject — and at least one of them is Wrong (for example, a giant bloodthirsty wolf) — that subject has a few options. The option that most interests me is the decision to embrace the Wrongness, to empathize with it, to take care of it, to expand with it. The werewolf (or any monster) who loves and is loved by their monstrosity is my entire jam.

Another thing that I doggedly insist about monster theory is that it has practical, real-life applications. Allow me to demonstrate with myself. I have OCD and social anxiety disorder. I talk about the former kind of a lot, so most people reading this probably already knew that. I talk about the social anxiety less, because it’s historically been less of a Thing (relatively speaking), but I can’t imagine anyone who knows me is overly surprised by this diagnosis. I consider my anxiety (of both varieties) to be mooooostly under control these days. This has certainly not always been the case, and I’m very proud of the work I’ve done to deal with my prone-to-screaming brain, especially on the OCD front.

Recently, I participated in an event that caused way more social anxiety than usual. It was an unpleasant reminder that general nervousness and disordered anxiety aren’t the same thing, and no matter how many times I’ve pushed through the former (and I have! a lot!), that doesn’t mean the latter can’t still knock me on my ass. It was a frustrating and disheartening experience, because I had been hoping to represent myself as a really interesting, thoughtful, and hard-working person. I am a really interesting, thoughtful, and hard-working person! (And clearly my self-esteem is fine!) So what the hell was going on? Why was I letting this thing — this anxiety, this invader — hide who I really am?

That’s when I started thinking about werewolves.

At first, I totally rebelled against the association. Anxiety disorders are medical conditions, not monsters. They aren’t coexisting points of view within me. They’re just chemicals and synapses and whatever. I didn’t ask for them and I certainly don’t have to let them determine who I am. I’m not all that unwanted stuff. I’m only the parts that I choose to be.

… Except substitute “curse” for “chemicals,” and you have the internal monologue of every newly minted werewolf ever.

And wasn’t my OCD the reason I did an AmeriCorps term? After all those agonizing months of obsessing over the effects of climate change, I chose to turn that pain into action and help actual victims of a natural disaster. I couldn’t fix all the suffering that our degraded environment has caused and will cause, but I did something, and it was something I wouldn’t have done without anxiety.

My anxiety has poured into my writing and made it so much stronger. I gave different parts of it to various characters (and all of it to one of them), and I also made these characters brave. Someday young anxious readers will read about these characters and see anxiety not only permitting bravery, but fueling it. I could not have done that without my own anxiety, either.

Hell, even my social anxiety is mostly focused on a fear of interrupting or inconveniencing people. It will make me uncomfortable, but it really doesn’t want anyone else to be. Both of my anxiety disorders just want everyone to be happy.

Sometimes I worry that I only have one story in me, and that I’m just telling that same story over and over again in different ways. It’s a worry that I imagine a lot of writers share. Impostor syndrome is a strong force in creative circles, and it’s easy to fear that someday we’ll be found out. What if, that doubting voice whispers, everyone discovers that I don’t have that much to say?

But of course all my stories are going to have some things in common. They wouldn’t be mine if they didn’t. And one thing that I’ve realized they share is a deep preoccupation with truth-telling.

This discovery was something of a comfort. Though the capital-T Truth may appear to be flat and non-negotiable, there are actually many things to say about it. As a writer, I am reassured that my stories won’t necessarily all feel exactly the same to my future readers (or my small and beloved gaggle of current readers). As a person, I am reassured that no one will ever run out of worthwhile things to say as long as we’re committed to the truth.

The types of truth-telling that interest me the most are speaking truth to power and speaking truth to the self. Neither one is easy, and both rely on the other. I don’t think it’s possible to speak truth to power until you’ve figured out what you believe in, which requires figuring out who you are and who you want to be. But I also don’t think it’s possible to truly be honest to yourself without feeling the need to speak up and speak out about the important things in life.

After all, how can you protest or make phone calls or argue or attend meetings or engage in any other means of resistance — up to and including straight up breaking unjust laws — without first admitting that you’re sad and angry and afraid? These are not easy truths. They require you to admit that you’re not in control of everything in your life, and that just opens up a whole other can of worms. Our own lack of control is everything that we hide from. When we stop hiding from it — well. It can be unpleasant.

The alternative, though, is pretending that everything is fine. As any writer will tell you, stories need conflict. There can be no growth, no change, until that conflict is acknowledged. And yeah, there are some real life conflicts I really wish had been avoided. I’m definitely not saying that all the awful things happening in the world are okay because they lead to ~personal growth or anything like that. There is an upside to admitting your own sadness and anger and fear to yourself, though. Once you acknowledge those things, you get to tell yourself another truth: that you care. And a caring person is a beautiful thing to be able to see when you look in the mirror.

So I guess that’s another running theme in the stories that I write: I write about people who are learning how to care. And if that’s the only story I have in me, then I’m okay with that. That story is beautiful, and I believe that it is true.

Listen, I’m not going to write a thinkpiece about the state of the country/world/human race here. I’m sure you’ve all read as many of those as I have lately, and I’m not really in the mood to read, let alone write, one more. Instead, what I’ve got at the end of this bizarre year is a list, some quotes, and some writing.

Because I’ve been a terrible blogger this year (again) (look, it’s on the New Year’s resolution list) (…again), here’s a list of some things that happened in my life this year:

I wrote two separate Strongly Worded Emails in a professional setting (one to a potential employer, one to an actual employer) about how they were Doing It Wrong (the former about mental illness, the latter about racism in children’s literature).

I got fired for the first time, from the actual employer in the above bullet point. I genuinely don’t know if these two things are related. Either way, no regrets.

I’ve spent about six months of this year getting paid to teach in some capacity, which is a major step down the life goals path.

I was the maid of honor at my beautiful twin’s wedding and now I have a brother-in-law! This is the best bullet point on this list.

I wrote the first draft of middle-grade story, several drafts of werewolf story (Misbegotten Creatures), and two academic papers.

I presented one of those papers at a conference.

I’ve dedicated at least two hours every week to political action since November 8th )(and will continue to do so from now on). I’ve also pretty much held on to my mental health since then, which given the specific nature of my intrusive thoughts is something to be damn proud of.

Which leads us to the quotes. I’ve written on this blog before about my two tattoos, which both involve flora and words. The words are “Watch me” (and though context-less on my ribs, the intended context is from Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go) and “with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah” from Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” (Clearly, this was one of the many deaths of 2016 that got to me, but at least he was actually fairly old, unlike some of the others.) I’ve been thinking a lot about both of those lines lately, about how I’ve etched determination despite all odds into my body. After all, the lines leading up to the end of the last verse of “Hallelujah” include “and even though it all went wrong,” and anyone who’s read Chaos Walking knows that like 2 of 10,000 of the things that happen in those books are actually good things. The plants, too, are about this: a branch from a willow tree, fragile yet abundant, and a Christmas cactus blossom, which blooms only in the darkest part of the year.

So all of that is who I am and who I will continue to be. I’m glad I already know that about myself. I’m glad I know I’m not one to give up.

Another quote that’s been on my mind is from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: “What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.” Not much to add to that, other than this line has been a helpful mantra to me in the past, and also we should all try to be more like Hagrid in our daily lives. (I mean, within reason.)

Last quote, also from J.K. Rowling, but this time from an interview. She once said “sometimes I know what I believe because of what I have written.” This has definitely always been the case for me. I have figured out so many things that I think are important (as well as a lot of things about myself) through writing fiction. Sometimes I’ve found it’s a good idea to lean into that and allow writing to help me define my own state of mind. So I wrote a scene that takes place in between story (The Children’s War) and its as-yet-mostly-unwritten sequel that’s about all of the above quotes, as well as waiting, as well as loved ones. And some architectural theology, because why shouldn’t I have some fun with it, too? I’ve been waffling about whether I should put it on this blog, but I wanted the few of you who know these characters to be able to read it if you want. So click through if you’d like, and happy New Year to everyone. I’m glad I get to meet whatever’s coming with all of you.

Today, instead of waking up at a frankly unseemly hour of the morning and commuting directly and dangerously into the rising sun, I instead began my first week as an AmeriCorps alumna instead of an AmeriCorps member. My unexpected life detour into disaster recovery has come to an end. It was a pretty bumpy road at times, but I’m glad I took it. I was able to help some people along the way, which is really all I wanted out of this experience.

I also met some really lovely people. I keep making mental notes of topics of conversation to bring up in the office, forgetting that I don’t actually work there anymore. I mean, I’ll be back there at some point, possibly to borrow their scanner and also to return the traffic cones I inadvertently stole. Also, social media is a thing. Still, it’s always strange when you see someone every day — whether a classmate, a roommate, or a coworker — and then you suddenly don’t.

“Abrupt change” has been sort of a theme of my life the last couple of years, I guess. Like I said in my last post (which was almost two months ago — so much for New Year’s resolutions, whoops), I do have some constants, though. Writing, of course, is my greatest constant, and I’m excited that I’ll have some more time to do so now.

I also have plenty of Plans, but none of them are quite Reality yet, so that can wait for a future post. Writing is my Reality, though. It’s maybe strange that something as intangible as making up stories out of thin air can be as solid a bedrock as it is for me. I just appreciate having an area of my life that I don’t have to question. I’m not sure where my writing will take me, but I’m sure about the writing itself. I know I’m very lucky to have that.

For now, I’m going to be working fewer money-making-job hours than I had been (though I’ll be earning considerably more, because AmeriCorps), so lots of people have been asking me what I’m going to do with my “free time.” This has got me thinking about when I stopped thinking of writing as “free time” and when I started thinking of it as my job. The switch must have happened pretty gradually, because I can’t pinpoint an exact moment. But yeah — I’m not actually going to have any more free time than I ever did. I’ll just get to use more of my work time to do the job that I love the most.

And someday, I hope, I’ll be able to say the same thing about my writing as I can say about my AmeriCorps term: “I really helped some people with this.” I definitely never felt sure of myself as a disaster case manager the way I do as a writer. I actually spent a pretty large portion of my 10-month term thinking I was kind of awful at it. If I could go and tell myself one thing at the beginning of my term, it would be to try to get out of my own head occasionally. Of course, I’m fundamentally incapable of doing this literally ever, so the advice wouldn’t have done much, but I do realize that people in need don’t need the people helping them to be perfect. They just need them to keep trying. That’s something I did do, and that’s something I’m proud of.

One of the tenets of the organization I worked for was that people have an innate desire to help others. While that’s hard to fit in with some of the contractor fraud I saw (some people will literally steal tens of thousands of dollars from children and little old ladies after their houses are destroyed! So that’s a thing!), I genuinely think that’s true of most of us. I also think that if someone is anxious or prone to guilt due to personality or brain chemistry or latent childhood religion (or all three, in which case hello and welcome to the Existential Crisis Club!), then they probably worry that they don’t help enough.

At my AmeriCorps class’s graduation party (bowling! Which I actually really enjoyed — maybe I’ll follow in my mother and grandmother’s footsteps and become an Intense Bowler), my bosses and coworkers made speeches about us, which was emotionally overwhelming and embarrassing but also really gratifying. So, I guess if I were to actually arrive at a point in this meandering post, it would be that I encourage you to go and emotionally overwhelm/embarrass someone who’s helped you in your life. Tell them what they did was good and enough. Because while (good) people don’t help others for the recognition, letting them know they’re appreciated is an easy and kind way of turning it around and helping them in return.

So there’s my sappy moral. That’s the end of my free time for the morning. Now: to write.

Once I went on a tour of a butterfly sanctuary. Jewel-bright insects of all shapes and sizes meandered through the air beneath the glass ceiling of the habitat as the tour guide explained the facts of the butterflies’ brief lives. He pointed out a chrysalis.

“Everyone knows that caterpillar makes a cocoon, and after a while, a butterfly emerges,” he said. “What most people don’t know is that, in order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar’s body LIQUEFIES.”

Here he paused for dramatic emphasis, but he really didn’t have to. My eyes were already bugging out of my head (no pun intended) as I stared at the hard and withered-looking chrysalis. I was horrified and delighted in equal measures. I spent the rest of the day repeating this fact to anyone who would listen to me. It’s still one of my favorite nature facts, just because it really doesn’t seem like it should be possible at all. Complex bodies shouldn’t be able to disintegrate and reconstitute into something else entirely, should they? Yet the evidence was all around me, wings flexing lazily, no trace of the gooey mess they had once been.

I’ve thought about the liquefied pre-butterflies a lot this year. Obviously, their behavior is driven by instinct, and I know better than to anthropomorphize bugs to the point where I project existential angst onto them. Still, the whole liquefaction deal can’t exactly be pleasant, can it? You spend all that time chowing down on leaves and either camouflaging or looking poisonous (successfully, if you’re lucky), then suddenly: bloop. Life is a weird time for caterpillars is basically what I’m saying here.

I sympathized with this weirdness in 2015. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was a bad year. It was just kind of bizarre. I spent a lot of time feeling as muddled and discombobulated as caterpillar soup. “Quarter-life crisis” became a fixture of my vocabulary. It was the first full year of my life not spent as a student, and with that structure gone, I felt strangely diffuse. It was a year of impermanence: I started it in the middle of Hermit Life, then moved home for a month, then became an AmeriCorps member. That chapter of my life will end in two months, too. In that way, I’ve ended 2015 the same way I began it: without knowing what comes next.

A quick consultation with Google has informed me that some cells survive the liquefaction stage of metamorphosis. They’re called imaginal discs and they are the foundation on which the adult body will be built. This is almost unbearably poetic and I can’t resist running with the symbolism for a moment here. Those of us who are lucky will have some imaginal discs of our own, the constants that survive whatever unforeseen changes we’re forced to go through.

Good family and good friends are the most important constants a person can have, and I’m grateful to say I have both. Even if I’m flailing about in a sea of existential confusion, they’re never confused about who I am. I hope that they would count me among their constants, as well.

Another imaginal disc that is as hardwired into my being as a butterfly’s antennae is my writing. There have been plenty of times this year when I didn’t really feel like a real writer. I’ve been pretty isolated from the literary world, which is something I want to work on this year. I’m no longer attending degree-mandated workshops and readings. Meanwhile, in the “hurry-up-and-wait” career path of a writer, I’ve been squarely in the “wait” portion all year. Which is normal. Which I’ve always known is how things work. Which I accepted a long time ago.

Which is still hard sometimes.

However! I grew so much as a writer this year. Werewolf story and I continued wrestling one another until finally we were dancing. I tackled the challenge of being a writer with a non-writing 8-to-5 job and, even though it proved to be predictably exhausting, I got some pretty great work in during my lunch breaks, if I do say so myself. Even if my passion was invisible to most of the people around me for many months, it was still there. It was becoming something.

I’m so goddamn proud of werewolf story. I did right by my monsters. I let them become something, too.

The caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly metaphor for growth is very old and tired, but once you know the gruesome biological details, it seems even more appropriate. That in-between stage can be very disorienting. But this year, I will continue building myself around my imaginal discs, the parts of me that always were and always will be. That way, whatever emerges from my uncertainty will be a self that I will recognize and like. Anyone else who had a weird 2015, and I know a lot of you did, I believe that you can do the same!

So that’s enough navel-gazing for now. (It’s New Year’s, I’m allowed.) Another one of my resolutions is to blog more, so hopefully this dusty old page will see a lot more of me in 2016. I hope there will be some exciting things to report!

I have officially survived my first two weeks of my new 10-month service venture. Everyone on all the different teams in the organization seems terribly nice and I have not been nearly as shy around them as I was afraid I would be. Apparently hermit life hasn’t completely destroyed my ability to interact with others. Also, the more I learn about this organization, the more sure I am that I have made the right decision about what to do for the next 10 months. I’m even already starting to take on Responsibilities, despite the fact that the first week was orientation, so I’ve only had one week of training so far, and I also have zero experience in anything I’m doing.

As a newly minted client services coordinator, I have literally been dreaming every night about grants and insurance and loans. I expect to be completely mummified in red tape soon. Part of my job — apparently a fairly sizable part, too — will be telling people no. No, you don’t qualify. No, we can’t help you. This will suck for me but suck a whole lot worse for them. In a weird way, that’s motivating me. My frustration will be nothing compared to the people still rebuilding after a natural disaster that happened two and a half years ago. Even when I have to say no, I’m hoping I will also be able to say why. Maybe, if nothing else, I’ll be able to clear up some of the agonizing confusion.

Of course, that means I have a whole lot of learnin’ to do myself. Early in the week, I found myself falling back on grad school strategies: “Don’t just take notes on it if you still don’t know what it means,” I told myself several times. I kind of enjoy squinting at the computer screen with a skeptical eye, trying to determine if a) the text makes sense and b) I agree with it. I always did love school, but now the stakes are higher than just my own grades.

A couple of times, the topic of “rose-colored glasses” was raised — as in, make sure you’re not wearing them. I’m really not, but some people may l think that I am, because there is nothing that can stop me from being blazingly, doggedly, indefatigably optimistic about the work I’m about to do. Optimism is very often conflated with naivete, but to me, they couldn’t be more different. Rose-colored glasses are for the naive. Optimists are the people who look straight at the hard truths of a situation and say, “Yep, we can work with this.” Optimists do not deny pain. They also do not deny joy.

Writing off positivity and hope as some sort of illusion is just as unrealistic a worldview as pretending that negativity and hardship do not exist. I know because I have done both. As a child, I knew that there were some bad people and bad circumstances. I have always felt and thought deeply about the suffering of others, even before I’d lost my first baby teeth. (I was a kind of intense kid.) But I assumed that suffering was by and large a rarity. I assumed that all problems could and would be fixed by the adults of the world. I projected my parents’ goodness onto everyone, and therefore I thought that nothing could stay very bad for long. As a children’s lit person, I don’t mean to imply that all children are naive. But I was, and I’m glad I was, because it stemmed from being loved and protected and safe.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I swung the other way completely, and that was by brain chemistry, not choice. By the time this happened, I was nearing the end of college. Obviously at this point, I wasn’t as naive as I had been at age six, but I still had great faith in humanity — a faith that vanished seemingly overnight. Suddenly I thought that no disaster could be prevented, and every person on Earth was simply rushing towards a series of unavoidable catastrophes that would eventually claim them. Simply put, I found myself believing in the doctrine of “nasty, brutish, and short.” I’d pass a stroller and pity the baby for having been born. I’d sit next to a stranger on the bus and envy them their ignorance of the hellscape I was convinced was about to unfold.

You’ll often hear people say that if you expect the worst, you will be pleasantly surprised by a better outcome, but I found nothing pleasant about pessimism at all. I didn’t even feel like I was myself anymore — and, as a pessimist, I did not believe I could get myself back.

And then I proved myself wrong.

My optimism these days is not about platitudes or blind faith. My optimism is fierce and furious. I didn’t solve the problem of my own despair just to leave other people in theirs. So I will believe the best can happen because I am going to make it happen. And when I personally can’t be the one to make it happen, I will put my trust in the other optimists of the worlds, the ones who stave off helplessness and hopelessness by working as hard as they goddamn can because that’s the only way they know how to live. These are the people who, like me, would much rather be disappointed by a bad outcome than never even trying to make something good happen.

I know these people are out there. I just joined a whole organization of them. I don’t need rose-colored glasses to see that.

“Write what you know” is one of the first things writers learn to unlearn. Lots of common writing advice out there isn’t actually so spectacular, and even the good advice doesn’t work all the time. Dismantling bad habits and faulty preconceptions is as much a part of becoming a better writer than building up your skills. It’s certainly harder.

To be honest, though, I don’t know if I ever really had to unlearn “write what you know.” I was never interested in writing what I knew in the first place. Case in point: in third grade, I wrote a story for Writing Workshop called “Lilly and the Blinding Light.” It was, theoretically, a mystery, although it failed at being so on every conceivable level. (There was no solving of anything. The criminal just kind of revealed himself for no reason. Also his threatening note read like one of those superstitious chain emails — “if you don’t do X, Y bad thing will happen because magic and also I said so” — although I don’t think I really had much exposure to those as a third grader, so apparently I came up with that level of ridiculousness all by myself.) As a character, however, Lilly was important for one profound reason: she wasn’t at all like me.

There is a scene that takes place in Lilly’s kitchen, where she asks for the same sandwich she eats every day, which in hindsight I blatantly ripped off from Harriet the Spy. However, I made sure that the food Lilly asked for was food I myself did not like. I remember writing this and being thrilled with the fact that this character was different from me, that she was her own person who I had made up. This summer, I discovered a sequel to this story, which I have no recollection of writing whatsoever, in which Lilly is a raging jerk to her stepfather. Here again, she was different: I do not have a stepfather, and if I did, I would like to think I wouldn’t be so mean to him for no reason. Lilly apologizes for her behavior at the end, so I must have deliberately chosen to have her act poorly. Having a character make mistakes I had not made and liking things I did not like and having triumphs I had not had — well, that’s what made writing fun!

As I got older and better at plots (marginally) (I mean eventually I get there but first drafts still have echoes of Lilly in them), I also began to realize that it was important that I not always write what I know, because that was how I learned things. For example, Beidrica in story is my basically my polar opposite. When it comes to how we interact with the world, we have almost nothing in common. In fact, a lot of the things she does and believes are things that I hope to dismantle in my own society. But through writing her, I developed an insight into the terror and guilt of having to turn your back on a dogma that has guided your life. I am relieved that I was raised in a way that ensured I would never have to face that particular brand of terror and guilt. I think it is important that I can now understand it, though, not because these emotions excuse my character’s or any real world people’s actions, but because they must be acknowledged in order for there to be any change. I sincerely hope one day story and its sequels will be part of the public discourse on acknowledging the difficulty and also the necessity of rejecting harmful jingoism and exceptionalism. If someday it is, then it will be because I did not write what I knew.

Another reason it has been important that I do not always write what I know is that I obviously want to represent many different types of people in my fiction. Diversity in YA and children’s lit is very important to me, and frankly there are plenty of characters out there who already match my demographics. We really don’t need many more of them. Of course, while I am not writing what I personally know from my own experiences, I am trying, to the best of my ability, to absorb and apply the knowledge of other writers and theorists and thinkers through the ages who have expressed their own thoughts about race, gender, disability, sexuality, and even trauma. Not writing what you know isn’t the same as inventing unrealistic experiences of important matters. It’s a lot of work to not write what you know, and it should be. (I think telling a worthwhile story should be hard, and that part of why “write what you know” doesn’t work is because it’s too easy.)

So there’s all that.

But then sometimes I find myself kind of, well, writing what I know. It even happened once with Beidrica. I don’t even remember how many drafts ago, but I had written a scene where Beidrica is just heaping responsibilities, including literally impossible ones, onto her shoulders, thinking about how she couldn’t possibly let herself off the hook for things going wrong in the world — even when she had absolutely no control over them. I meant to show how heavy the burden of her ideology was becoming, but then I took a step back and started laughing. We may not have arrived at that feeling for the same reason, but for once I knew exactly what Beidrica felt because I had felt it too.

I wonder, does everyone react to personal epiphanies by letting out an unhinged laugh and saying, “okay fine yeah I GET IT”?

With werewolf story, not all of my write what you know moments have been so accidental. Millie and I are very different, but we share a lot of the same frustrations. Central to the entire story is the question of “how could I possibly make anything any better”? Millie has a lot of reasons to ask this that don’t match my reasons, but the longing and doubt inherent in the question are things that we share. As a result, there are some scenes that, when my loved ones finally read them, will probably make them laugh and say “YEAH YOU WROTE THIS.” But I also hope that those scenes will really resonate with people. And I don’t want them to resonate to a greater extent than any of the parts where I’m not writing what I know, per se — I hope everything feels true and right — but the flipside of the ease of writing what you know is the vulnerability of it.

Especially because I don’t have the answer to that question yet. But maybe if I can figure it out for Millie, then I will also know it for myself.

Since my last post, I have finished the second draft of werewolf story and visited a bunch of friends I haven’t seen in a long time. I have also consumed a bunch of media that made me cry, including about 30 seconds ago, so I’m feeling sappy. I’m going to write a real post soon (and I’m going to try to do that more regularly), but right now I am just feeling happy about my place in the world. My future is almost comically uncertain, but I know what I love to do and I’m doing it, and more importantly, I know and care about a lot of super excellent human beings, and they care about me back.

Next week, I’m going to be volunteering at an environmental day camp for kids, and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be A) the only staff member neither high school aged nor parent aged and B) the only staff member not affiliated with one of the religious institutions in charge of the camp (it’s an interfaith program), so it might be a bit of an interesting experience. I’m excited about it, though, because in the program I’ve been provided with, each day will use a narrative as a springboard for positive action and change for kids. “Narratives as springboards for positive action and change for kids” might as well be tattooed across my face, because that’s all anyone needs to know about my interests and passions. Though I doubt this particular camp will crack the future code for me, I am hoping to get some ideas for that looming question: what can I do in addition to writing? Which, yes, is very much a financial question, but hopefully also something else. I have to believe there’s something out there that will let me help people and will maybe also have health insurance attached to it. While still leaving me really large amounts of time to write, because that is and always will be my real job, despite the fact that no one’s paying me for it.

Okay, so I’ve given myself a pretty tough future code to crack. But as I mentioned to some of my friends while I was visiting them, writing is kind of recession-proof, insofar as it was a bad financial decision before the recession, too.

In any case. Post-graduation/post-any-life-change has usually been a cue for me to totally freak out, but I guess I must really be getting older and wiser, because while I have had a few minor meltdowns, I am happy. During the last summer-after-graduation (the Cursed Summer of 2011), this was not something I could say. Two of the friends I visited this past week hadn’t seen me since the kickoff of that season of the damned, and I know it wasn’t only awful for me. (I think it may actually be illegal to be happy right after finishing undergrad.) But now: damn, my friends are awesome. Have any of us cracked the code completely? Of course not. We’re millennials. The code that’s been handed down to us isn’t so much encrypted as it is total gibberish. But we are wonderful. Absolutely hilarious and clever and supportive and even sometimes happy. And we rejoice in each other’s happiness, too. Happiness, like anything else, waxes and wanes, but I’ve learned now to trust in its return.

I am grateful for my happiness and grateful for the happiness of my friends. And if anyone out there is unhappy and finding it hard to trust in happiness’ return, I can trust in it for you tonight. I’m a 25-year-old writer who has a no-benefits part-time job, an anxiety disorder and a newfound autoimmune disease, and a head full of dysfunctional made-up teenagers. My only life plan right now is literally to live in the middle of the woods for a few months, and I just received notice that I’m halfway through my student loan grace period. I may not have altogether much to extend to the world at large right at this moment. But I can share my gratitude, and my faith in people, and my joy.